


To See Beyond the Veil

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 21:58:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3504200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ok. This is short. It has to do with trying to write another round of "grounded, professional Greg and Mycroft," and examine Greg seeing the person behind the mask for the first time--and how that changes things. It's based on a premise of Sherlock again faking his death, but this time Mycroft and his team are the ones left out of the loop, while Greg and John and Mary are part of the team then investigating Mycroft's people for a mole. </p><p>I want to look at this again, sometime. I don't like the technique, here, but I do think with care that this kind of shift feels in character for both men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To See Beyond the Veil

“Why did you do it?” Jamie Hart from MI5 asked Lestrade, exasperation dripping from every terse syllable. “For the love of little fishes, Lestrade….”

Lestrade looked away. His temper loitered, sullenly, in the bad part of town where it wasn’t safe to walk at night. It flicked a switchblade and muttered that it was time he got away from working with morons who forgot what sort of man life had set him up to be. Sometimes he grew weary of being seen as a good chap…too good to smack them as they deserved.

  
Pearl Kakar, from MI6 added her own frustration to an already toxic brew. “After all the trouble we went to isolating him, you have to ruin it.” She looked narrowly at Lestrade. “Or maybe we’ve been working with some false assumptions…”

Lestrade gave a sulky, frustrated huff of his own. “Oh, for… No, Kakar—I mean, Ms Kakar—I am not the mole. But you knew that. You brought me in because I’m literally impossible in that role. Wrong connections, wrong access, wrong motivating factors. I am, and I quote, ‘The one agent besides Sherlock who can’t have anything to do with the leaks out of Mycroft’s division.’ As a result I am one of the few people who knows the thruth of the current mess. One of the few you can let into the investigation. One of the few you can draw on to do any leg work inside Mycroft’s own walls and protections. He trusts me…enough to allow me to fool him. Thus you are using me. And that’s it in a nut shell. I’m the mole you’ve sent in mole-hunting.”

“And you put it all at risk,” Hart said, fiercely. “For what? One moment’s pity?”

Lestrade narrowed his eyes. “Are you suggesting I did anything out of character, Jamie?”

The three fell silent, considering the afternoon’s events.

“He was where we wanted him,” Hart muttered.

Lestrade frowned—it was critical Mycroft believe the unbelievable, that he trust the very people who were lying to him. MI5 and MI6 needed to prove, beyond all question, that Mycroft’s division had been infiltrated, but that Mycroft himself was innocent. They needed him occupied, not asking questions, not aware of hidden alliances as they did their work. Mycroft otherwise protected his own people, and his own fief. But there was something about Hart and Kakar’s lingering hunger for signs that Mycroft was helpless, alone, fooled by their plans, that creeped him out a bit.

Spies—this was what he got for hanging around with spies. Who else would get their jollies from tricking the spymaster of all England?

“He’s shattered,” Lestrade said. Then he made a face. “And, yeah. He’s alone.”

Mummy Holmes had cried all through the funeral service. She’d been incapable of talking to her elder son, clinging to Father Holmes’ sleeve and pushing her face into the dark wool. The urn containing the ashes had stood up on the table in front of the altar.

Mycroft had picked it, according to Anthea…and according to the feed-back software that reported all her integrated internet and phone actions back to the cadre investigating. Lestrade had looked at the tall, slim urn—so elegant, a shimmering, luminous peacock blue and green shade that almost seemed to hum in a shaft of sunlight.

It had all been hell.

He’d looked at John and Mary’s faces, and thanked God Mycroft was not really close enough to read the subtleties of their expressions. John’s face so still and sober, Mary’s bland, both straight as arrows in the pews…and every so often a flicker of something else. John’s eyes burning a bit too slyly on Mycroft. Mary’s sudden, shattering moments of too-intense awareness….

They were Sherlock’s friends, though, not Mycroft’s…and they couldn’t have missed Sherlock’s funeral. Not this one, of any. Not the one Mycroft knew was real.

Mycroft had been scoured out by the loss. His skin had seemed the almost blue-white of skim milk. His lips had been tight. He’d risen and sat, never missing a cue through the long C of E ceremony. He’d sung the hymns. He’d knelt and accepted communion, passing the urn on the way to the altar rail—one hand rising, then falling.

Then he’d gone up the little stairs to the high balcony that looked out over the portico of the church, and waited patiently for the priest to open the urn for the scattering of the one ritual handful of ashes over Sherlock’s beloved City of London. Lestrade, among the party present for that final action, watched closely.

Mycroft stood straighter, eyeing the urn like a nervous horse eyed a wild killer newspaper, giving it the side-eye and stamping restlessly. He’d massaged his right hand uneasily with his left thumb. The mouth of the urn had gaped, no more comforting than the mouth of a grave when all was reckoned. No matter what, it came to this: ashes to ashes. The elder brother had extended his hand to take the token fistful—and frozen. His hand shivered in the air, and he stared, face horrifying because it was almost, but not quite still. Just expressive enough to rip the heart out of anyone watching.

Lestrade had stepped forward, unable to bear it. He’d touched the rigid shoulder, trailed his fingers down Mycroft’s arm, even as he reached for the urn with his right hand. He could remember the brush of ceramic against his knuckles. The faint, bitter, dry smell of the ashes. The gritty, dusty, silken-sandy blend of ash on his fingertips as he scooped up a small handful. Gently, he’d turned Mycroft’s palm, his own left hand supporting the younger man’s. He’d poured the ash and ground bone into his hand.

“You can do it,” he’d murmured.

Mycroft had met his eyes—for what was the first time Lestrade could ever remember. He had pale, cool blue eyes, more ice and silver than his little brother’s. The pain had been terrible. The confusion and guilt worse. After a moment shared between the two, an intimacy entirely new and alien to their previous relationship, Mycroft nodded soberly.

“Yes. I can. Thank you.” The back of his hand had stirred in Lestrade’s—then he’d lifted, flexed, and sent the ash adrift in the wind coming down the avenue. A moment later it was done.

“There,” Mycroft had said, then fished in his pocket with his free hand, finding a pocket handkerchief. He dabbed uncertainly at the dust and grit still left on his skin. “What are the niceties of disposing of one’s brother’s ashes, I wonder? Am I obliged to wash in a basin and pour the dregs out over the roses, or some-such?” The tone was as light and dry as the ash on the wind…but beneath was something deep and dark as a river at midnight.

“I think there’s a limit,” Lestrade said. “Sherlock wouldn’t mind.” Which was quite true. He was probably listening in over the pick-ups, laughing his skinny arse off while his brother struggled with mourning.

“Mmmm,” Mycroft murmured, unsatisfied. He finished, though, and stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket.

Now, in the review, Hart and Kakar continued to whinge and fuss. “The strategy was to isolate Mycroft without allies,” Hart growled. “Make sure he couldn’t work against us while we are busy investigating. Cut him off from anyone but his own team.”

“You just didn’t want him knowing Sherlock was even available to work on it with us,” Lestrade pointed out. “And that’s fine. He still doesn’t know his brother’s alive. Perfect cover. Probably the only cover that would work—he thinks he walked the body from the assisination site to the morgue, from the morgue to the crematorium…from the crematorium from the church. You and Sherlock got your wish—you palmed the aces and fooled the great Mycroft Holmes. Now no one knows you’ve got that resource to help you clear Big Brother. Be satisfied.”

Hart snorted. “He’s going to guess,” he growled. “He’s going to see it in your eyes.”

All Mycroft had seen in Lestrade’s eyes was someone who cared—who saw his own hurt. Lestrade was sure of it—and strangely touched by the hesitant, shy reaction.

“If he does, good on him,” he growled. “He’s not a suspect in any case. We’re just making sure he can’t tangle our efforts to catch the mole. Now, if you are done?” He didn’t wait for the two to go any further, but rose and left.

He drove home haunted—not by long, lean Sherlock, who was no more dead than Lestrade himself—but by the taller, sturdier man who mourned him. He rubbed his fingers together, his senses remembering the feel of a hand resting on his, the faint tremor of grief and stress still there in the delicate bones and sinews. His mind recalled the dark figure, neat and alone, standing outside the church as his parents walked away. His mother still hadn’t spoken to him…

The next time he had to meet with the elder Holmes, he suggested they stop for tea at a little spot near St. Paul’s. He studied the man—how he moved along the pavement like smoke, avoiding the touch of strangers. How his eyes darted uneasily around the tea shop. How he jumped at the crash and clatter of a dropped tray…

What amazed him were not the signs he’d missed before—of shyness, of agoraphobia, of hidden PTSD—but the courage of the man who functioned regardless. He feared the streets and the strangers and the sounds—but, still, he braved them. Still he served.

When he found himself walking with Mycroft, a step back and hovering at his elbow, he knew he was lost. Regardless of his conscious mind, his subconscious had laid claim to Mycroft, and now stood guard.

He sighed, and wondered how the hell they were going to deal with the return of Sherlock


End file.
